Sadly, the designers know about this serious flaw in game mechanics but have chosen not to adress it.

It is not a flaw.
It is called battle...

In such a case, commitment will make the difference ... or the fact that you have to go to work, school, shopping and your opponent not
Then again, maybe he has to do something, while you can remain at te controls and you get the upper hand.

Calling this a flaw is incorrect IMHO; in fact it adds spice to the battle and requires your personal involvement instead of just auto-play.

The post was edited 2 times, last by _Pontus_ (Dec 2nd 2018, 11:21pm).

There is an error when fighting. When I and My opposition patrol at 1 position and same have 40 airplanes . He did not finish circle the patrol (15m) but I finished it, and what happened was that I lost 4 planes, he did not lose anything.

Sadly, the designers know about this serious flaw in game mechanics but have chosen not to adress it.

It is not a flaw.It is called battle...

In such a case, commitment will make the difference ... or the fact that you have to go to work, school, shopping and your opponent not
Then again, maybe he has to do something, while you can remain at te controls and you get the upper hand.

Calling this a flaw is incorrect IMHO; in fact it adds spice to the battle and requires your personal involvement instead of just auto-play.

Do you REALLY not consider it a game flaw that the optimum way to conduct air battle requires you and your opponent each to be online every 15 minutes, and when you both do, zero losses are inflicted?

Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege. - Josef Stalin.

Do you REALLY not consider it a game flaw that the optimum way to conduct air battle requires you and your opponent each to be online every 15 minutes, and when you both do, zero losses are inflicted?

If put in that way, it indeed sounds awful, but ...

Say there are 2 opponents fighting for control of the airspace, with equal skills and equal air fleets, should the outcome then be dictated by the game mechanics and 'x-factor' alone, or should the human-player element be decisive?

Or put differently: would an almost predictable outcome based on game mechanics be the preferred way?

IMHO stamina, concentration, will power, effort etc making the difference seems more attractive to me than a purely computed outcome.

You're absolutely right; BUT, losses should be incurred by both side, based on relative skill.

I fully agree, if it is the case that it comes to a shoot out; but that is not always so.

Imagine, when 2 Red Barons would be fighting eachother in the sky, neither of them will make a mistake (assuming there is no infantryman on the ground with a machine gun ... is who brought down the Red Baron in RL, apparently) and the air battle would end without victory, simply because they would run out of fuel.

One Red Baron could only loose out to the other, if they would both be in the possession of mobile phones and, unfortunately for the one, one would receive a phonecall from his wife, demanding he pass by the butcher on his way home, after his daily battle, because they have guests that evening.

Since it is his wife calling, he cannot refuse to answer. This may already break his concentration and/or timing and cause a mistake which loses him the battle.
The battle thus is decided by a human factor (in this case the factor 'wife').

Alternatively, skilled as he is, he may still manage that incident without losing the battle. But then comes the pressure! And the irritation!
How on earth can she ask that, while he is in the middle of a dog fight, requiring all his attention?
And how much time does he have left to win this ... or will he have to pull out of the fight to get to the butcher on time?
This may again break his concentration and/or timing and cause a mistake which loses him the battle.
The battle thus is again decided by a human factor (in this case the factor 'wife').

But maybe not...

So, he survives that one too. Nevertheless, the clock is ticking on mercilessly towards the butcher's closing time and he can't sit there at the controls forever!
He must leave the battle. There is no choice... After all, skipping one victory in the air is beter than having to face an unwinnable battle at home...
Thus he skillfully dodges his nemesys, dives into cloud cover and off he goes, just in time to make it to the butcher before closing.

Having vacated the airspace, the enemy now has won time, moves in with ground units with sufficient AA to make an impact and the territory and airspace is basically lost.
The battle thus is finally decided by a human factor (in this case the factor 'wife').

There are 2 important elements in this:
1. Battles are not always won on skill, but sometimes on the opponents inability to react properly for other reasons than lack of skill.
2. Make sure your wife (or girlfriend/mother/'whoever-can-demand-you-to-go-shopping') doesn't have your mobile number... (I know, that is a tough one since a decade or 2)

I therefore humbly maintain my argument that it is not a flaw in the game, but the reality of battle, which is not always decided by skills or kills, but by factors such as i.e. luck, time, stamina, will power or wife.

(PS: This might even be the truth behind the demise of the Red Baron... Did the Red Baron receive a pigeon in mid-air from his wife, asking him to pass by the butcher on the way home? If he did, maybe that is why he didn't pay sufficient attention to where he was flying, or he took a shortcut, and thus flew too low over an infantryman's machine gun? Did anybody check for a pigeon in the downed plane?)

Since this is an air battle thread, I was wondering what the effects are of a nuclear bomber in patrol mode. Would it still do 25% every 15 minutes based on its nuclear capabilities or just its strategic bomber numbers?

I once had one in the air on patrol while I was gone...when I came back the bot had run a unit within its area. It acted like a regular plane. Which makes sense as the captain of the plane refused to have the crew cut up the plutonium and throw it out the window every 15 minutes.

Air superiority is most important in this game. I do not like idea about SBDE because it makes no sense to me. If you split your force and patrol same area they have better chance and do not disturb each other. First time I saw player who has patrol with 5 fighters and 5 bombers I attacked it with 9 fighters, he had no looses but I had lost 6or 7 fighters, That was time when I realized that he has 4 groups of 5 fighters and 5 bombers. I sad, hey it is very god way to hide your troops, so I used this trick a lot. Later I heard about sbde and stuff. I still feel that group of 20 fighters and 20 tac bombers should do better than you split them, but it is how this game works so never mind. Also I feel rockets are over powered, I played against one golden user who had no army at all, he just stopped all atacks with making houses, one or two militias and than kill all force with rockets. We beat him because he was multi accounting and he became inactive after some time.

The cost of achieving and maintaining air superiority is now much higher than before.
Especially Tactical Bombers are not what they used to be since the update of Aug. 28.

Alternatively, defence against massive air fleets (whether split or heaped) with other means than 'an even bigger & badder air-force', is very well possible and offers many additional advantages. However, for this to be effective, one still needs to master the prinicples of SBDEat least as well as one's opponent in the sky.

SBDE is easy enough. It doesn't have to be 100% exactly right what you do. I do not calculate exactly like before, but use approximate number that feel right from experience.

Once you master SBDE, I can assure you that there is hardly a bigger joy in-game, than to see an opponent attack my ground force with his über-powerful air fleet (talking about a total of 60-70 TBs with matching numbers of fighters, split according to the laws of SBDE), with which he took country after country, leaving enemies in chaos, disarray and panic.

The joy comes ofc not from the 1st attack round in patrol modus, but from the reaction and disbelief, when he strikes a 2nd time to disproof what he saw the 1st time (and can't be possible?!).
And it is then that I see him turn around and flee, having lost 25% to 33% of the bomber fleet, trailing smoke from his dragging tails.
My losses after 2 strikes were laughable.

There is an answer to every threat in this game. Just afford the time and resources to counter any specific threat with the appropriate counter measures.

But whether you still believe in air-superiority as the tool to mend all mistakes or whether you fight on the ground or with mixed weaponry: SBDE matters! I believe even more so in air battles than elsewhere.